Thursday, July 21, 2011

HNT - Mark Van Dyke

A couple of weeks ago when I was on vacation, I didn't shave for a few days. It happens sometimes when I'm on vacation. I decide to skip a day of shaving - the next thing I know, a few days have passed and the stubble starts to fill in.

By the end of the week, with the Warrior Dash coming, I thought it would be fun to shave the hair off my cheeks and leave a Van Dyke style beard. (Yes, not a goatee -- it's called a Van Dyke after a 17th Century Flemish painter known as Anthony Van Dyke - a van Dyke consists of any growth of both a moustache and a goatee with all the hair on the cheeks shaven)

In any case, I grew this beard for the 5K warrior race and decided to keep it for a couple of more weeks.


My beard has always had a red tint to it. This time, the grey on my chin is VERY pronounced. So much so that at times and in certain light, it can look like I just have a really, er "stylish" moustache that stretches down to either side of my chin.

A few folks have told me that it suits me. I think it helps make up nicely for the lack of hair on the top of my head, perhaps distracting the eye from the shiney reflection beaming off my extended forehead. In my lifetime, a beard of this style once would have allowed me to fit into the artsy or academic culture nicely - the style, though, has become way too popular and worn by so many men now that it doesn't represent anything other than standard fare.

It won't last. It never does. I had a beard for a year or more back in high school, and since then, I've grown a beard perhaps less than a dozen times, typically keeping it for no longer than a month at a time.

But this time the beard won't last long mostly because every couple of days my wife asks me when I'm going to get rid of the "dead raccoon" thing on my face.

Francine has a wonderful way of not mincing words. Gotta love that.

3 comments:

* said...

I think Francine and I should get along splendidly every Movember.

Mark Leslie said...

LOL, Onfire. (Oh, Fran corrected me, BTW - said she called it a racoon tail, in reference to the Daniel Boon hat in Needful Things)

lime said...

makes me giggle. francine motivates you to shave and i motivate mr. lime to keep a van dyke because without it he looks too much like his brother and i just can't imagine wanting to kiss his brother.